You Are Dumb, which is not a blog, posts new columns when it can manage to in these troubled Trumpian times. It is also a Twitter feed, @youaredumb, with content in a similar vein but much shorter. For a take on what a blog by me would be like, check out OLDNERD.

December 29th

Memo to Trump, The Frankenstein's Monster: YOU ARE THE DUMBASS OF THE YEAR.

Before we were interrupted, I was in the middle of explaining how, since Donald Trump has systematically obliterated all possible competition for Dumbass of the Year that the only way to do the award, and Trump, justice is to examine the various facets of his dumbassery.

On Monday, we discussed Trump the bigot. But today, let's talk about the secret to Trump's success. And like most of the success in Trump's career, it has very little to do with Trump himself. This is Trump, the Frankenstein's monster.

Donald Trump is not an aberration. He's not a unique phenomenon. I've said this before, but Trump is the culmination of 35 years of Republican planning. He's not what they expected to make, of course, but that's why he's Frankenstein's Monster. They created him, but they can't control him.

The casual racism of the Southern Strategy, the establishment of right-wing talk radio, right-wing colleges, right-wing cable channels. The entire alternate information structure that allowed them to essentially breed and raise an entire generation of True Believers, suckling at the breast of Limbaugh, weaned onto the soft food of Town Hall, educated at Liberty University, coddled by the anti-intellectualism of the Dubya years, reinforced by Sean Hannity. An entire generation of preprogrammed dipshits.

This generation responded to the election of Barack Obama by coagulating into what we called the Tea Party. Taxes were their stated bugaboo, but since taxes were lower than they'd been in decades, that was a flimsy excuse only good enough for 90% of the media. They were Generation Wingnut. They believed everything bad about Democrats - that we were going to steal their guns, murder their babies, and turn the children we didn't abort into homosexuals.

And even then, it was starting to become apparent that Generation Moron might be more than the docile pool of faithful voters the Republicans had been trying to create all these years. Threats of violence, blatant racism, and general loud stupidity filled their rallies. The rabble was roused. They did what they were supposed to do and got Republicans elected, but got some of their own elected in the process. They dispensed with moderates who didn't live up to their programmed ideas of ideological purity, and the teabagger caucus, despite being a minority, wielded a whole bunch of power.

They wielded this power because, well, a lot of what goes on in Congress depends on people not being ideologically-driven fuckwits who will stop at nothing to get their way. Or, as they call it, "comity". There aren't a lot of safeguards to stop people from exploiting rules and loopholes, and therefore we entered the age of government shutdowns and debt limit showdowns and government by extortion.

Oh, and along these lines, Sarah Palin.

So along comes Donald Trump, presidential candidate, and almost by accident, he's the epitome of everything Generation Moron has been trained to love. He's a billionaire, and they've been trained to believe that you only become a billionaire through hard work, talent, and integrity. He's racist and doesn't get in trouble for it. They're racist and have been getting in trouble for it. He's not part of the government, and all the Republicans in the government have been telling them for decades that the government is awful and worthless.

And beyond all that, he's the Republican caricature of "strength" made flesh. Indiscriminate ego. Big swinging dick. Simplistic foreign policy obsessed with evil empires, evil axes, and evil allies. And let's not forget his complete and utter disregard for facts, which is great when the powers that be are trying to feed lies to Generation Moron, and less good in an intra-party squabble.

Republicans didn't create Donald Trump, in much the same way that factory farming of poultry didn't create salmonella. They just created an environment where Trump could thrive and grow, in pursuit of other goals. So he's taken over. He's captured Generation Moron, a chunk of the voting bloc Republicans have relied upon for victory. And he refuses to let them go. It's entirely possible he never wanted to be President in the first place, and never thought he would get this far. But his ego's not going to allow him to stop, and his money's going to keep anyone from stopping him. The ouster is out of control.

We'll find out in the next eleven months whether the primary process can stop him, and if it can't, we'll find out just how large Generation Moron is. It'd be fun watching Frankenstein's Monster burn the castle to the ground, if we all didn't, you know. Live in it.